A Savage Place
by Asenath
Summary: The fay, most especially the pixies, are known for their abilities to obfuscate the correct path, to lead astray... Integra makes the unfortunate acquaintance of Albemarle.
1. A Savage Place

Author's notes: This is a post-Millenium manga piece. As such, this has the potential to be full of spoilers through volume seven, as well as potentially AU. I've gone ahead and assumed Enrico Maxwell as dead, since Hirano put the mark of death on him at the same time as certain other characters. So while in the manga, he's not dead yet, he's probably not getting any better. Conversely, I've chosen to not interpret the events of Wizardry yet (i.e., Walter's status), so I'm going to assume that he's the same old loyal retainer. Rare of me to put my notes here, I know, but I thought it was only fair to warn you of these things.

* * *

Chapter 1 - A Savage Place

_A savage place, as holy and enchanted  
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted  
By woman wailing for her demon lover_  
- "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge

_Religion is not the opiate of the masses_, Integra Hellsing thought, as an anonymous elbow poked into her gut for the fifteenth time that day. _Public transportation is._

She stood on a gritty platform at King's Cross station, surrounded by crowds of commuters, travelers, families, _children_ (those particular unholy demons that she was bound to protect). In the bustling crowd, it was easy to forget how the canopied dome of the train shed had been split like an egg, only months before; and how brick, ash and timbers had rained down like a particularly gruesome mockery of the English weather. The world might end, but the trains would run on time again--and here they did.

And there was her servant, too, seeming engrossed in reading the timetables for the trains to York. He had traded his usual pseudo-Victorian affectation for clothing that suited the winter weather more--an ankle-length black wool felt coat, a red wool scarf, and a pair of sunglasses perched on his aquiline nose. It was a disguise more suited to protecting him from inquisitive eyes than from the elements.

With nothing better to amuse her for--she looked at her watch--the ten minutes until the train arrived, Integra joined Alucard in perusing the timetables. He looked down briefly at her arrival, acknowledging her presence. "This is unconscionable," she muttered.

"Yes, the prices have increased significantly since my last time on the train." _In 1902_, he added, that haunting voice in her head. She noticed him risk a touch of smile. "So much for 'sound as the pound.' "

"I more meant the fact that my Rolls has become intimately acquainted with a wall. And my heli with the bottom of the Thames."

He looked down at her again, appraising her with that same half smirk. "I suppose this _is_ a little plebe for a Romanian prince and a knight of the realm, isn't it?"

"Plebeian" was a word that Integra was dimly aware started with a "p" and ended with an "n." Outside of that, her acquaintance with the term and its circumstances was minimal. "There's nothing plebe about living in a funeral parlor."

Ah, yes, their new accomodations--the mansion may have survived destruction, but it still was rendered temporarily uninhabitable. The contractors estimated it would be only a few weeks of work. True to form, three months later, it was still poxmarked with scaffolding and utterly unlivable.

"I think it rather suits us," Alucard replied. He and Seras had set out their coffins in the embalming room in the basement. Aside from the morbid accoutrements in that room, the rest of the house had the air of the mansion she had left behind, complete with the dark wood paneling and the crosses over every doorway.

"Rather. Perhaps I should let you sleep in the freezer, then." Without preamble, she went on, "They don't allow smoking in here, do they?"

"No."

Integra carried on with little attention to his reply. "I suppose everything will be all right while I'm gone to the conference. The world can't end twice in one year, can it?" She had left Seras in charge of defending their.... funeral parlor, and Walter in charge of finding a vehicle suitably sturdy and elegant to replace the Rolls-Royce, now that the war with Millenium had put the company temporarily out of business. But as usual her mind was still with her work, back home--insurance claims, most of it, although she had been dismayed to discover that most insurance firms were not eager to issue returns of property value due to "acts of vampires."

"In your profession?" Alucard cocked an eyebrow. "I wouldn't be so sure."

Integra simply shook her head, exhaling a cloud of steam into the cold air. After a pause, she looked over to the timetable that Alucard held, and eyed the tiny Times New Roman text that pointed out her destination. "Whitby. Another Synod." She said it with a touch of resignation.

"Whitby," Alucard echoed, with a touch more relish than she had given the word. "Do you suppose they meant something by it?"

"Oh, certainly. These are _Catholics_. They leave nothing to chance." She had to admit she didn't know _what_ they meant by holding it in such an inauspicious place--and inviting them, to boot. But there was time enough for that. She smiled a bit, looking up at her servant. "It's been a very long time since you've been there."

With a whirring of air, the train before them opened its doors, finally admitting that it was ready to admit passengers. Extending a gallant hand forward, Alucard led the way, finally answering Integra's question. "Yes," he said, daring to show more teeth than he had previously, "although I remember the cuisine with some fondness."

--

They changed trains at York, boarding a mostly-empty train that would take them to Whitby and other seaside locations. As they pulled out of the station, rain began to fall--the weather seemed more suited for snow, but that hardly deterred the drops from falling.

Integra had chosen one of the semi-private six-person cabinets, which by virtue of the train being abandoned, they had all to themselves. Alucard's first action was to pull down the shades on the windows, closing out what little light wanly filtered through to the interior of the car. He kept the sunglasses on, nonetheless. Mercifully, he had no complaints about being forced to travel during the day.

Truth be told, Integra had at first considered Walter to be her guest in this trip to Whitby. Certainly _he_ could behave himself in public, had no compunctions about traveling during the day, and wouldn't cause a national emergency if his peculiar bedding arrangements didn't arrive as expected.

In the end, she was forced to consider his health--sub-par since the attack on the Mansion--above all else, and conclude that he was better suited to administrivia than he was to the task of being a bodyguard in a strange town.

Not that Whitby was altogether strange to her. She quirked a smile, leaning back against the bench seats. "Last time I was in Whitby I must have been nine. It was summer, and I remember the trains being packed. I kept telling my father I wanted to go swimming. I didn't understand how cold it would be! I remember he bought me a little figurine in jet--of a monkey. I think I must have lost it."

Alucard said nothing. He had copied her pose, and looked like he was trying nothing more than to get some rest.

Appealing to his megalomania, she turned the topic to more relevant rememberances. "I remember we walked up to St. Mary's Cathedral on those 199 steps. You remember those steps, don't you?" she said, slyly. "Or did the Irishman make that up, too?"

Finally he responded, with a smile of his own. "Hardly. I made the papers, in that one, didn't I?"

"You did. Though 'black dog' hardly does you any justice."

"It was the easiest explanation, I imagine."

"Yes, 'tenebrous Cerberus' is a bit tawdry, isn't it?" she admitted, nodding. She reached into a pocket, and pulled out those familiar cigarillos and a lighter. "Do you miss those days? When you were free to obey nothing but wanton bloodlust, and all that?" She lifted the stick to her lips.

"Would it make you happy if I said yes?"

"Probably." She touched the tip of the cigarillo to the lighter, and it erupted in blessed, blessed flame, with the sweet, comforting smell of tobacco smoke. Mentally, she calculated that it had been exactly four hours since she had last had one.

"Then, no. Don't miss a minute of it. The Victorian underwear was frightfully chafing, and I kept having to play nice with that idiot Harker. He was rather like one of those real estate agents that keeps showing you suburban American-style ranch houses when you've specifically said you want a Tudor style open-timbered house with a formal garden."

"I assume by "ranch" you mean 'Carfax Abbey' and by 'Tudor-style open-timbered house with formal garden' you mean 'succulent Victorian virgins'. Unless I miss your analogy entirely."

Before either could continue their remiscences, the door slid open. A uniformed conductor, with a unruly goatee that quite belied his official status, poked his head in. "Tickets?"

Integra did what she always did in such situations--flashed her diplomatic credentials, adding a cloying glance for good measure.

The conductor nodded. "Very good, Sir Hellsing--and the gentleman traveling with you is?"

"A servant," she said, with a distinct note of pleasure. "J.H. Brenner."

The man nodded, jotting down a note on a piece of paper. "The name sounds familiar."

"Have you ever been to Brazil?" Alucard remarked darkly.

The conductor eyed him strangely, but seemed to prefer to bring his attention back to Integra, who was still smiling that sweet smile at him. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to put out the cigarette. The laws prohibit smoking on trains."

"At all times?" she inquired. She was sure it was only an advanced sort of desperation that made her want to snap at him that it was a _cigarillo_, not a _cigarette_. After all, perhaps the rule was one of those time-conditional rules, like only using the loo when the train was moving. 

"At all times." The conductor's smile seemed to sour a little. He turned back to Alucard. "_You_ don't smoke, do you, Sir?"

"Not unless set on fire," was Alucard's cheeky reply. He stood up. "If you don't mind, I have some baggage I'd like to check on." He pushed past the conductor abruptly.

Integra thought that she heard the conductor mutter something as he left about the diplomatic corps not being very bloody diplomatic. She ground out the cigarillo angrily on the seat of the train. Country be damned--it was full of infantilizing cowards who wanted to protect everyone else from the stale ashes of a leaf, these days.

Unable to self-medicate, she did the next best thing: she dozed.

_She had been in the basement of their new funeral parlor accomodations, and had walked up the stairs, but now she was in the great hall of the former Mansion. Compelled by force, she kept walking. She opened the doors of the manor to reveal a great forest of trees--not the parkside oaks or stately evergreens, but tropical plants; trees with red flowers and redder berries. A path was carved through the trees, however, and she followed it out of the trees and onto flat, swampy land--a moor? Perhaps._

_There was a grand manor house there--how very Emily Bronte, her subconscious couldn't help but add--and as soon as she thought to walk towards it she was there, standing on the threshold and the door was opening and standing at the door to greet her was a man with his head half-cocked to the side. He had a smile on his face, but he also had hair the color of the void and unholy eyes and as he held out his hand to her she felt as if she had been struck-_

She awoke with a start. The train had stopped; the compartment was dark. "What demon is this?" she whispered into the darkness. It was only moments later that she realized that she had spoken outloud.

Alucard frowned. His eyes glowed red in the dark. "Come. We're there." He lifted the window shade and stared out. "And it looks like we're awaited."

--

It was strange that, upon seeing Heinkel Wolfe--in her 'habit' of trenchcoat and dark glasses--on the platform, Integra felt somewhat more at ease.

Integra suspected it was the way she had _talked._ Maxwell, damn his soul, had the smooth intonation of a man who belonged to no country. He sounded--like a Jesuit, actually. Like a Vatican dog, faithful to no man alive. And Anderson, well, he had simply the voice of a fanatic, interesting only to himself.

Heinkel nodded her head in a cordial, if not effusive greeting. "We have been waiting." There was that accent again. _Ve_. _Vaiting_. It had so many memories attached to it, most of them involving a gun to her head. Somehow, those left Integra feeling less dirty than her encounters with Maxwell.

The train had been late--the goateed conductor blamed the weather--but Integra did not feel like making excuses. She cut right to the point. "Why have you asked us here? Surely you don't want Protestants at your Synod-"

"The choice is not mine," Heinkel snapped. "But you are here to help in deciding the fate of Enrico Maxwell."

Integra was boggled. "Fate? The man is dead."

Alucard intervened. "I think what she means is that his place in the Catholic pantheon isn't exactly assured after his behavior leading to his death."

Heinkel spat. "Pantheon is a word for heathens. There is a movement, however--led by some of the few surviving members of the order of knights he commanded in battle--to beatify him."

Integra raised her eyebrows. The path to sainthood did not seem one for which Enrico Maxwell, megalomaniac and betrayer of the Vatican in time of war, seemed destined. "I expect they'd be the last to want to beatify him."

Heinkel pursed her lips. "Far be from me to speak evil of dead men," she said, but went on, "but after what he did to them, perhaps they're just seeking to allay some cognitive dissonance. I mean, if they believe that they were sent to their deaths for _nothing_ by a prince of the Church, then that would lead them down a far more difficult path. To believe they are heroes working for a hero comforts them. Nevertheless, it's a lie." Her face hardened. "But we're wasting time. Come, there's a limo waiting."

Not far off a sleek black vehicle with the Vatican insignia was waiting. "Are we going to St. Hilda's Abbey?" Integra asked. "Following in the grand tradition of 664?"

Heinkel frowned. "No. Most of that belongs to the Crown now," she made a sniff of disdain, "and is off limits to us. But I think you'll find the accomodations adequate, nonetheless." She looked meaningfully at Alucard. "Even you. I hear the guesthouse has an abundantly large wine cellar, and they are having a _rat_ problem."

The driver--a young man in unadorned ecclesiastical black--slipped out of the front seat of the limo and opened the doors for them before Alucard could make any reply. Heinkel slid into the back, and Integra followed, handing her wheeled suitcase off to the black-clad driver. She beckoned to Alucard to follow, but he had his eye on the train still, where his own particular baggage was still being unloaded. _Ah._

"My luggage is a little too.... cumbersome for your vehicle." He smiled, showing his full complement of canines. "I'll follow later."

Heinkel raised an eyebrow, looking suspicious. "Oh? And how will you do that? I haven't told you where we're going."

"Oh, I imagine I'll just follow the smell of your blood. _Virgin_ blood." He closed the door abruptly, ending any further discussion of the matter. Within a moment, he was out of sight, bounding up on the platform in search of his peculiar baggage, his black coat flailing and blending into shadow behind him.

It was dark in the back of the limo, now that the door had been closed, but Integra thought she could see the nun reaching under her trenchcoat for the pistol she kept in a shoulder holster there. She was torn between feeling pleased that _her_ servant, _her_ monster had gotten the better--even if just in verbal sparring--of an old enemy, and feeling some sort of sympathy. God knows how many times she herself had been on the business end of Alucard's pithy sense of humor.

There was no need for either. Heinkel finally came to her senses; realized the only harm she would be doing would be the window glass. "Remo, we can get going," she said flatly to the driver. She followed this by sliding closed the privacy glass between the driver's compartment and theirs.

"Let me get to the point: this is a small affair, bringing in only a few representatives from each Section. I'm going to be representing Section XIII--I can't imagine why, but they said I was the only one they trusted." She said "trusted" with a note of distate. Integra smiled, having a clue why that might be. Heinkel was the only Iscariot member she had met with any sort of tangible grip on reality. "You have been asked here to give testimony on Maxwell's behavior during the Millenium attack on London." More darkly, Heinkel added, "I think you know well that the man was not in his right mind. He was drunk on his own power. We are all outcasts, in Iscariot, but he thought to gain his favor back through sacrificing other faithful at the altar of war. His god.... was not my God." There was a sadness in her voice. "Nor do I think it was yours. I hope you will do what you can to see that this man is remembered as a devil, not as a saint."

Integra was quiet for a time, considering how Heinkel's esteem for the man had fallen. There was a time the nun would have followed him blindly to her own death, but that time had passed. In that, at least, she was pleased--she might have a disdain for Catholics and their methods, but she was glad to see that, in this, they had not fallen victim to hypocrisy. "We do follow the same creed in many ways, Ms. Wolfe," Integra said, carefully. "We may believe that there are some... exceptions to 'Thou shalt not kill,' but we do believe in, and obey, its spirit. I am ready to condemn any man that did not follow his own oaths."

Somewhere in the dark, Heinkel smiled briefly. "Then I am pleased to have you as my temporary ally--once again."

Integra only inclined her head in a gesture of service. She had her own thoughts about their "temporary allegiances" of the past, but she chose to keep them silent.

"But that's not the only reason we've brought you here," Heinkel continued abruptly. "We're also planning on having a briefing on some potential... mutual enemies." She stared out the window at the lights of the town whizzing by. "Tonight and tomorrow morning will be the Synod conferences. I trust you can entertain yourself until tomorrow afternoon? At that time I'll ask you to come in and testify on Maxwell's behavior during the war. After that, I'll be doing a briefing for you and some other guests of our Synod. Other Knights, most of them. But I suspect this will be of special interest to you." Heinkel lapsed into momentary silence. Finally she said, a touch darkly, "I didn't expect you to bring your pet."

"I didn't expect to bring him either," Integra replied, innocently enough. "But as usual, he insinuated himself. Especially once he knew the destination."

"Oh? Did he want a seaside vacation?"

Integra was surprised that Heinkel didn't know the reference. "Hardly. It's where he came ashore, some hundred years ago."

Heinkel's mouth formed a little "o" of surprise. "I had _forgotten_." _Vor-gott-en_. It sounded like an epithet. "You shouldn't have brought him. This is a holy place."

Integra grinned. "Holy, and yet enchanted. It's got quite a history, this little hamlet."

Heinkel did not respond. Finally, she added, "You could have forbidden him."

"I could have," Integra replied slowly, allowing herself a pause to think. She didn't mention what had, in the end, kept her from doing so--Walter's infirmity, and a lurking fear that Seras would do as Seras had done so often, and develop a fit of ethics at a critical moment. Seras was a smart girl, a sweet girl, but a girl still, and a girl not altogether accustomed, even now, to life in the shadows. "But a little slack on the leash now and again has its advantages."

"If he misbehaves, I'll put a silver bullet down his filty, worm-eaten gullet," Heinkel said, simply. It was not a threat--it was just Heinkel.

"I'm sure the feeling is entirely mutual, Ms. Wolfe."

They sat in darkness, their faces occasionally illuminated, ghost-like, by a passing street lamp. They could not have gone more than five kilometers before the vehicle turned into a narrow lane and stopped, gravel sounding a gritty friction against the wheels. The same driver in black opened the door to let them out.

The rain had only intensified in the time it had taken them to drive from the station. Integra could feel it, gritty and stinging cold against her face. _Sleet_. She looked around. Ahead, a path led up a slight incline, through a garden sharp with rose briars, to a sizable guesthouse with a jaunty red tile roof, which bore the sign "Harrigan Guesthouse." Beneath it, in smaller letters, it read, "Since 1803." Integra could hear, from beyond the stretch of the inn, the sound of breakers pounding against a cliff wall.

The door of the inn abruptly, and out hurried a woman--middle-aged, wearing a yellow rain slicker, with straggly grey hair lashing wetly about her face--followed by a boy of about twelve, in similar attire, but more neatly groomed. "The proprietors?" Integra asked. She found she had to raise her voice to speak above the howl of the wind.

Heinkel nodded a yes. "Joan Harrigan, and her son Charlie."

The woman, aided by the driver in black, found her way to the back of the limo, and started unloading suitcases. Integra recognized her own, but the others were unknown--she assumed they belonged to Heinkel and Remo, the driver. "I have a companion who I expect will be arriving late," Integra said to the proprietor. When that elicited no response--the sturdy woman made not even a nod, but simply continued loading suitcases into her son's waiting arms--Integra repeated herself, more loudly. "Excuse me! My companion-"

"Don't waste your breath," Heinkel said, bending close to Integra. "They are deaf. Both of them. Congenital defect. The father was hearing, but they've fallen on hard times since he passed away."

"Deaf?" Integra was surprised. It seemed a.... difficult disability for someone in the service industry. Knowing who she was dealing with--Iscariot, and the Vatican--it also seemed a touch... suspicious.

Heinkel frowned at her. "Do you begrudge a hard-working Irish Catholic family a bit of income from our business?" When that elicited no reply, she continued, "Oh, certainly, it has its.... conveniences."

_Yes, rather. Don't let your faithful flock know that you're considering sanctifying a man who valued his own ambition more than any God_. Wisely, Integra kept this thought to herself. "Well, what _is_ the best way to communicate-"

But Heinkel was one step ahead of her. She had tapped Mrs. Harrigan on the shoulder, and had commenced a conversation through gestures alone. The woman nodded, eyed Integra, nodded again, and turned back to her work.

Integra fought back a smile. It was such a _human_ thing, seeing Heinkel do that. "You know sign language?"

"Well, I did learn _something_ in my mission days in Managua," Heinkel replied, as if it were an obvious conclusion. "Of course, I had to..." she searched for the right word, "_abridge_ your request somewhat. I don't think I ever learned how to say 'vampire' in any of the sign languages I learned." A smile to match her own came over Heinkel's face.

The rain and wind suddenly intensified, cutting off further speech. As if taking the weather as a cue to enter, Alucard appeared at the end of the driveway, a human-sized bundle wrapped in white propped on his shoulder. He and his package were soaked through with rain. As if that weren't enough to put the fear of God in anyone, his feet made no sound on the gravel driveway, and his coat, in this darkness, was such that one couldn't tell where it ended and shadow began. For all Integra knew, it could have been shadow alone--she had long suspected that he had done away with the inconvenience of dressing himself in clothes in favor of dressing himself in shadow.

"I found you," he said, simply enough, his eyes fixed on Integra.

Mrs. Harrigan took one look at him, slammed the trunk of the limo closed, and _pulled_ her son after her up the driveway. She made some gestures to Heinkel as a way of excusing herself, and disappeared behind the door of the guesthouse.

Integra shrugged and turned back to her servant. "Welcome to Whitby."

_Hmmm,_ he said, a tickling in her brain. _I see the hospitality hasn't changed much in one hundred years._

--

At 9:32 the next morning, Integra found herself sitting astride Alucard's coffin, tapping impatiently on the lid with the tip of an unlit cigar. "You do remember our agreement, right? You told me you would visit the town with me if the day was overcast. I am pleased to inform you that the National Weather Service tells us we can expect nothing but clouds and more sleet, with a 20 chance of snow before midnight. Is that overcast enough for you?"

Their room was a typical guesthouse room--a bed, four walls which you could reach out and touch without leaving said bed, and a bathroom down the hall. The night previous, upon seeing the space, Integra had been ready to demand another room for her servant, but she changed her mind upon remembering that she would have to seek Heinkel to be her interpreter, and she hardly wanted to discuss the dynamics of her and Alucard's sleeping arrangements with the nun.

So instead she made do--which meant that every time she tried to head for the toilet in the middle of the night, her feet came right down on the lid of Alucard's coffin. It was an unconvenient arrangement, to say the least. He seemed to ignore it, but then, he slept quite soundly--well, like the dead, to abuse the metaphor. It unnerved Integra more than a little, though it was a toss-up whether that, or the thought of meeting up with sleep-walking bishops in the hallway, was more bothersome.

_And where will we be going downtown?_ he responded, finally. If it was possible for his mental communication to sound a little sluggish, it did.

From the bed, Integra pulled a few pamphlets for tourist attractions that she had picked up in the common room of the guesthouse. "Ah, well. We're in the bed of _history_ here. There's St. Hilda's Abbey, formerly the location of the 664 Catholic Synod to decide when Easter would be held--also the site of some other historic events that I'm sure I would remember if I'd paid better attention to my history lessons. There's the Captain Cook Museum.... the Victorian Jet Works.... ah, and yes, I thought you'd enjoy this one--'The Dracula Experience.' 'See the nightmare of Bram Stoker's Dracula come to life... in wax!' Oh, dear. I fear that if that wax figurine is meant to be _you_, they have got the facial hair all wrong."

Integra recoiled as the lid to the coffin beneath her was suddenly thrown off. With an elbow to the edge, Alucard pushed himself up to a half-crouch. "You're not seriously thinking of bringing me to an attraction called 'The Dracula Experience,' are you?"

"I don't know," she said, perusing the pamphlet. "You must admit it has a certain sort of campy appeal."

He grabbed the pamphlet out of her hand, nearly crushing it. He looked at the front, and then the back, squinting at an image. "Is that.... supposed to be Mina?"

Integra took the pamphlet back, squinting at it in turn. "Hard to say. Either way, I do think that fur coat is terribly anachronistic."

--

30 minutes later, sick curiousity had won out.

The exhibit was empty, save for a bored teenaged girl with purple hair, who had taken their money and promptly disappeared to the gift shop in the back. They were left alone with the tinny sound effects and the wax figures.

Most of the exhibit could be seen without leaving the storefront, including the wax figurine in the fur coat--who, according to the plaque, was indeed supposed to be Mina Harker. Up close, it looked rather like she had been attacked by a particularly vicious swarm of weasels. That, perhaps, was the most threatening thing about the exhibit--that, and the fact the "Dracula rising from his coffin" animatronic looked about to shatter through the floor.

Despite his initial reluctance to come, Alucard seemed fascinated with the whole affair. He was busying himself reading the faded wall plaques that described the story of his Victorian exploits, as liberally interpreted by a certain Irishman.

"_I have been so long master that I would be master still--or at least that none other should be master of me_," he murmured, reading aloud what was in front of him. "Did I really say that?"

Integra shrugged. "It certainly sounds like something you would say."

"I apparently possessed an uncannily accurate foresight back then." He paused, looked towards the back, where a streaky window separated the exhibit from a closet-sized gift shop. "This place has a _gift shop,_?"

"For all your Lucy Westenra plush toy needs, I suppose." Integra quipped.

The gift shop did not, sadly, hold any such item, although it did have wax fangs, every possible edition of _Dracula_, bat plush toys with felt wings, and numerous advertisements for a local cafe's "Gothic Poetry Night."

Integra held up a stuffed bat toy. "I think Seras might fancy one of these. Why don't you bring one back for her?"

Alucard's only response--over a rack of books--was a withering glance. "Why don't _you_?" he said, adding mentally, _Master_.

"I think I shall."

The purple-haired girl rang them up. "On holiday?" she asked.

"Business," Integra replied.

_Always business_, Alucard added.

_Oh, don't talk to me about 'all business,' Mr. Won't Buy a Souvenir for His Childe._

_Childe, not child. What's she going to say when you hand it to her? "Oh, thank you, Sir. Your gratitude for my services is simply astounding!"_ Funny, how Alucard managed to transmit a startlingly accurate portrayal of Seras' voice.

_You're the one who's always on about how immature she is._

_Oh, so is this supposed to be a replacement for that damn Frenchman, then?_

She whirled around on him, gave him a dirty look. _I hope you don't talk like that around her. You might lose your head. Irreparably, this time._

_Is that you threatening me, or her threatening me via you?_

The clerk went blindly on with her chatter, ignorant of the battle that was being waged on a far different level. "Did you know that if you spend twenty quid you get a free copy of _Dracula_? Sure you don't want to add something to your order?"

_Because if it's the former, I just might get excited about the prospect._

Integra counted out the money brusquely, handing it to the clerk. "That's quite all right. I have the original manuscript."

--

Integra was only too happy to leave, even if it did mean facing that brisk sea air again. Wind in her face, she looked up the hill to the church and the abbey beyond. "Let's make a visit to the church, shall we?"

"I suppose running up those steps in dog form again is out of the question?"

"Not even for old time's sake."

It was strange, being in this town with him, watching him bound up those 199 steps ahead of her. She had been uncertain what to expect--a youthful glee? Solemn nostalgia? He seemed to waver from one extreme to another.

Pausing for breath on step 58, she reminded herself, _He was a monster. IS a monster. And this is where he killed_.

They reached the churchyard of St. Mary's. It was, not to her surprise, empty. In summer, this hilltop spot would be a pleasant respite from the heat, but in this season, the wind howled and cut at any exposed skin.

Alucard was strangely silent. There was a stone bench under a leafless tree--idly, Integra wondered if it was _that_ stone bench--and he walked over to it, seating himself. His fingers brushed patterns over the stone as he smiled a faint smile. Finally, he spoke. "The strange thing is," he said finally, "time doesn't pass any differently for me now than it did when I was human. I expected that if I was going to live forever, I might at least be able to forget easier. But I have that feeling--you know that feeling, that human feeling--that no time has passed at all since I was last here."

Unexpectedly, Integra found herself blurting out, "Why did you do it?"

He furrowed his eyebrows. "Do what?"

Integra suspected him, for a brief moment, of being intentionally obtuse, but then she realized that that was genuine confusion in his eyes. "Kill her. Lucy, I mean."

His eyes flashed from red to black. "_I_ only killed her the first time, and then only to live again. Why don't you ask your grandfather why he killed her; why he shoved a stake through her heart and beheaded her?"

Not the response she had been expecting--truthfully, she had been expecting something along the lines of his "I'm a monster, doing what monsters do" tripe. She frowned. "Once _you_ killed her the first time, she was a danger to others. The second time was inevitable. Unpleasantries like that often fall to my family." She remembered then her own hand on a weapon, striking down the ghoulish remains of her own soldiers--a familiar tapestry woven throughout her whole life. She really was not so unlike Abraham, then, was she?

"Sweet, gentle girl. Great, giant stake." His tone was mocking. "I suppose it made him feel _brave_."

"You're never going to succeed in making me feel bad about my family's duty."

"Oh, I succeed quite extensively in that. Of that I am sure. Where you think you win is that I don't always succeed in making you _demonstrate_ your rage."

Integra cleared her throat. "We're getting off topic."

"Oh, indeed." He tossed his hair back into the wind, put a finger to his lips in a dramatic gesture of thought. "Lucy. What do you want to know about Lucy? Why I turned her?"

"That was what I was driving at, yes. Mina... I understand that that was revenge. But I never understood why, of all the fair young women in this town, you chose her first. If it was virgin blood you were after, my goodness, this was the 1890s. It had to be everywhere. And well I know you've found ways to feed without killing, else there'd be a plague of your brood upon England by now."

He chuckled--it was a sound like the rumbling of storm clouds. He rose from the bench, turned away from her. "It's more complicated than you think--in both cases."

She wasn't going to let him off the hook so easily. She crossed her arms, taking a position that brooked no nonsense. "Your relationships with women _always_ have been, as far as I can tell. Try me."

"They were so often in each other's company, Lucy and Mina. Like sisters, those two. Both attractive women. Both very much a product of their era--their lives a straight path towards marriage, and no vision to see much beyond that. Lucy, especially. She was desired by all the men in her circle, even after her engagement."

"And let me guess. Being the chauvinist that you are, that made you decide that she was a prize to be won?"

Again that dry chuckle. "Wrong again, Master--though, I will admit, I've always wanted to have what is most difficult to gain." He turned back to face her, a glint of a smile still in his eye. "I will grant you that you have a certain..... inexperience with the male gender. It's one of those things that makes you so very... delectable." He ignored Integra's mental trill of shame--blessedly--and went on. "But you may be aware that--especially among the teenaged specimen--there is this habit of men dating women of which they aren't particularly fond in order to get closer to those of which they are?"

"I believe I have at least an anecdotal acquaintance with the phenomenon." She was growing annoyed at this bout of nostalgia.

"You may consider it the vampiric equivalent. I dallied with blood that wasn't to my liking in the misguided hope that it would bring me closer to what I desired."

It took Integra several eyeblinks to arrive at the point he intended. "Mina? You're telling me you turned Lucy because you thought it would bring you closer to Mina?" She blinked again. "That's a bit dim, even for you."

"In a certain sense, it worked. For a time. Her friend's 'illness' did make her more vulnerable--it also sparked your grandfather's witch-hunt, which caused her dear husband to neglect her for long enough for me to make my entrance. In the end, it was a bid I lost, I'll admit. But it wasn't altogether worthless."

Integra was stunned. And here she had chalked his obsession with Mina up to a desire for revenge on Harker, her husband. "And what was it you could get from Mina that you couldn't get from Lucy?"

"Some women," he said, with a growl, "are just more worth my time. Lucy was born to be a brood mare. I couldn't have made her anything else. Mina, however," he paused, "had promise." His final note was sour, a touch sad.

Integra rolled her eyes. Enigmatic, as always. "I hope you wouldn't do something so stupid ever again."

He smiled. It was a sly smile, hiding a secret Integra could only guess at. "I rather think I already have."

Once again, Integra was slow to catch on. When she finally did, she turned away, fumbling at the pocket of her tan wool coat for her cigar case. It was cool and comforting against her fingers when she found it. For now, it was enough just to hold it. Finally, a touch hoarsely, she said, "If that's the truth, then it's a terrible thing you did to Seras."

He nodded, as if admitting the truth of the statement. "I do have a rather Machiavellian attitude towards attaining my goals." A pause. "In case you've forgotten, that's something we _share_," he finished, with a hiss.

"Irrelevant," she said, tersely. "You've made her suffer. It wasn't to give her life beyond life, it wasn't to save her from some piece-of-shit vampire priest, it wasn't any of the things you claim--you play God to her, make her believe you as her saviour, when what the real truth is-" But she stopped. The real truth was unspeakable.

She was shaking. She had realized, then, the callous simplicity of his plan, and it scalded more than any of the unpleasant tasks she had been born to. She wanted to lash out, not for her status as Alucard's eternal prey--she had long ago grown used to that--but for Seras, and how she had apparently been the unwitting fatality of this stupid, stupid game they played. True, he had killed so many--what was one more? But he had also brought to the girl an unlife of sorrow and regret.

"You said to her what you said to me--'you don't want to die now, do you?' But you know, if she knew the circumstances, I think she might have wanted just that."

She was turned away from him, but she could almost feel him shrug. He was standing close to her now, breathing down her back--it was dangerous to have him in such proximity, but he would obey. As long as she bled for him, one way or another, he would obey. "I think you overestimate the human condition. They don't all suffer from your excess of nobility. She would have said yes. And one way or another, I think she's happy that she's not a bag of bones in a box in the ground, with nothing to her name but a commendation from the police department."

"No, instead she sleeps in a coffin and exists on human blood--when she can bring herself to drink it. A vast improvement, I'm sure."

"Hm." She could hear him walking away. His boots clicked on the flagstones--more for her benefit, she was sure, than anything else. "Perhaps I _am_ making you jealous."

Integra gritted her teeth. "How foolish of you to think so."

"How foolish of you to imagine that I don't know what you're feeling. You've never been good at closing your mind to me--and even if you were, I can smell your blood from across this town, and how it changes at your every flicker of emotion and whim of ego." A hand on her shoulder made her jump. She hadn't heard him approach. _Of course not._

She didn't even have the energy to push him away. She could see his long, pale fingernails out of the corner of her eye, sitting on her shoulder like some foul parasite. _No gloves. What did that mean?_ It was so very cold here, and his ungloved hand was just as chill, bleeding a kind of paralyzing cold into her. Finally, she managed to say, "I just wish to know... what this means to you, this goal of yours. I don't know if it's revenge for your years of imprisonment, or because you want more of my blood than you can get by being an obedient pet. Or," she started cautiously, "because you fancy me, in your own sick way."

"In my mind," he said, his voice losing some of its sharpness, and taking on a guttural, almost libidinous tone, "the three are intertwined. I want-"

_to take you to break you to dominate you to be dominated to glut myself on your blood on your passion to make you call me master to witness you as a goddess conquering death and cutting down your enemies as rotting wood before you-_

"Enough!" she shouted, pulling away from his grasp, gasping. She turned around to look him in the eye, feeling she had just seen too much, too much of what it was like to be inside that mind.

Alucard, for his part, looked... placid. Calm. Not gloating, for once. And she felt a kind of peace, seeing that, in that she knew he had just revealed himself to her in a very private way. His mind--it was the mind of a killer, the mind of a monster, but also a mind keenly intelligent, calculating, desirous. It was the mind of someone who had had five hundred years to plan, to yearn-

_To wait._

"The best thing is, I never get tired of waiting." He paused. "The difference between Dracula--who ran up those stairs a hundred years ago, and terrorized modest women against their will--and Alucard, who is your _servant_, is that I've learned the virtues of patience." He made a skewed smile, one eye visible over his glasses. "Sometimes."

"Remember that," she said coolly. "Remember that I'll be the one holding the reins for the next fifty years or so, until I die--peacefully, surrounded by grandchildren, I hope." She realized there were too many unlikely contingencies--marriage, children, not being cut down in her prime by the undead--for that to ever be a likely outcome, but it was a pleasant fantasy, nonetheless.

"I will remember."

_And in the meantime, I will wait, and serve. Master._


	2. A Knight and Lord of Fairy

Author's notes: I am sorry to deceive you, but this is not really a new chapter. Rather, I have decided that 10K words _is_ a bit excessive for one chapter, and have split this into two. If you read chapter one previously, then you have already read this. However, you can reasonably expect chapter three in a few days.

* * *

Chapter 2 - A Knight and Lord of Fairy

_Many a noble prince and noble fairy were at the birth of Oberon, but one Fairy was unhappily not invited, and the gift she gave was that he should not grow after his third year, but repenting, she gave him to be the most beautiful of nature's works. Other Fairies gave him the gift of penetrating the thoughts of men, and of transporting himself and others from places to place by a wish... Oberon further informed the knight, that he was king and lord of Mommur; and that when he should leave this world his seat was prepared in Paradise--for Oberon... was a veritable Christian._  
- _The Fairy Mythology_, Thomas Keightley

Integra emerged from her meeting with the Synod bishops, cardinals, and priests--and Heinkel, who had held up well despite her superiors obvious disdain for her Section and her gender. She brushed at the suit jacket, hoping to remove from herself the taint the whole affair had left on her.

Heinkel pursed her lips. "I'll give you some time to freshen up before the briefing." Integra nodded her agreement. "Did you enjoy your day on the town?"

"It was dreary." She was unsure if she was referring to the weather, or the company.

Heinkel took the former meaning, clearly. "Yes. And it's getting worse." She gestured to the window beside them, which opened onto the guesthouse's garden. The leaves of the oak trees there were bending upwards under strong gusts of winds. They were already slick with half-water, half-ice. "More sleet. Icy roads."

"Good thing I'm not driving." She hoped she would be able to catch the first train back to London in the morning--perhaps even tonight? She was just about ready to see this town falling into the distance behind her.

Integra had no desire to see Alucard again before the briefing--he could eavesdrop if he wanted, but she wanted to maintain at least the illusion of being free from him. Instead, she went down to the common room and indulged herself in some reading. The Harrigans had a selection of hardbound books--mostly historical--and among them she found an aging copy of _The Fairy Mythology_, written in 1870, by a Thomas Keightley. The text featured that sort of stately Victorian prose that nearly drowned under its own weight--including a preface detailing the author's hard luck, and the kind of prejudice he faced as an Irishman. _You and Bram Stoker should have a chat_, she thought, smiling. Idly, she flipped onwards, opening to the section titled _Middle-Age Romance_. Her eyes fell about halfway down the page:

_... because therewithin dwelleth a king, Oberon the Fay. He is but three feet in height; he is all humpy; but he hath an angelic face; there is no mortal man who should see him would not take pleasure in looking at him, he hath so fair a face. Now you will hardly have entered the wood, if you are minded to pass that way, when he will find how to speak to you, but of a surety if you speak to him, you are lost for evermore, without ever returning; nor will it lie in you, for if you pass through the wood, whether straightforwards or across it , you will always find him before you, and it will be impossible for you to escape at all without speaking to him, for his words are so pleasant to hear, that this no living man who can escape him. And if so be that he should see that you are nowise inclined to speak to him, he will be passing wroth with you. For before you have left the wood he will cause it so to rain on you, to blow, to hail, and to make such right marvellous storms, thunder and lightning, that you will think the world is going to end-_

The window rattled and scratched, and Integra started, nearly dropping the book. Outside, the wind had forced the branches of a nearby oak against the window. An early dusk was falling on the countryside, and the sleet had not relented its gritty assault against the window.

Footsteps behind her. Once again alarmed, Integra spun around. It was Heinkel.

"We are ready for the briefing, Sir Hellsing. We await only you."

Heinkel led her to a conference room on the first floor, closed off from the rest of the guesthouse by a set of louvered doors. The lights were dim within, and the blue glow from an overhead projector was splashed against the far wall.

Integra took her seat at the back of the room. The room was already full of people; some of them the clergy here for the Synod, some of them she recognized as Knights, diplomats, SAS and MI-5 officials.

Heinkel headed up to a podium, and fiddled with a few controls, tapped at a few keys on a keyboard hidden there. A slideshow popped up on the projection--that default blue and white, with the title: "Potential Threats to British Security." In smaller font: "Presented by Heinkel Wolfe."

_Oh, Lord. It's like attending a convention for dentists_. Integra wondered if she should be taking notes.

Heinkel lost no time in engrossing herself in a list of names and faces. _Ira Almeida, suspected terrorist. Stephen Candor, suspected of handing information about key landmarks over to Millenium during the war. Emma Trabatora. Oren McAighan. Lynn Wood._

Integra soon tuned out. This was more of interest to her MI-5 compatriots; what interest did she have in hunting down mundane, human war criminals? Her duty was--and always had been--that of dealing with the supernatural, that which the Crown couldn't deal with on its own. Her services were hardly required here. In the warm, dark air of the room she was beginning to get sleepy-

_Julian Albemarle_. Heinkel's voice was suddenly a note more strident. Integra sat bolt upright in her chair. Had she been dozing? Now it seemed as if Heinkel's voice had struck her like an arrow intended only for her.

"This one will be of special interest to certain of you." Heinkel's eyes fell on Integra knowingly. She pressed a button and a new slide flashed on the screen, this one with a smiling male face. "Julian Albemarle, son of the Earl of Ellesmere."

It was strange for Integra to pay any attention to the features of the opposite sex, but she couldn't help but notice that there was something hauntingly attractive about this man's face. It was encapsulated, perhaps, in that hint of a smile, those green eyes, that black hair swept down in an untidy part, and a general symmetry of features. He bespoke a man at once meek and yet secretly confident, who knew his own beauty and its power...

Startled by her own thoughts, Integra halted her mental promenade, returning her attention to Heinkel. "Albemarle first came to our attention a few months ago, after a disturbing event at a Catholic day school in Shrewsbury. According to the reports of parents who showed up to pick up their children at the end of the day, the school was empty--except for a message, written in blood on the wall of a classroom: 'Fairies bite, too.' Foul play was feared, but seemed contradicted by the fact that a businessman at a store nearby reported that he saw the entire school's worth of uniformed children, and their teachers, crossing the street into the adjoining park at shortly after 14:00 that day." Heinkel paused, seeming a little overwhelmed by her own story. "One body was found in the Severn. It was that of a seven-year-old boy who seemed to have been mauled by some sort of animal. Written on his chest was the same inscription as was found on the wall of the classroom." Again Heinkel paused, this time while the room broke into murmuring.

One man in the front row raised his hand, hardly waiting for Heinkel to give him a nod before beginning to speak. "I heard nothing of this in the news."

Heinkel nodded. "Due to the young age of the victims and the kind of unpleasant publicity that would ensue as a result of this, we had approval from the Shrewsbury authorities and the families of the victims to keep this quiet. We would like to stop who is responsible before we release any more information to the public."

Integra spoke up, clearing her throat. "And you think it's this Albemarle fellow? Might I ask why? Besides both being attached to Shropshire?"

Heinkel smiled. "Ah, Sir Hellsing. I knew you'd take an interest in such an unusual case. Our suspicions were immediately drawn to Albemarle because he was so hasty to show himself at the scene and express his sadness and.... 'regret'--his choice of words, not mine--for the events. It seemed a little strange to me that the son of an Earl from a town more than a few kilometers away would feel the need to do so.

"I had my colleague, Ms. Takagi, look into Julian Albemarle a little deeper. She was able to find out some about his interests. Apparently he is quite active in the animal rights community. For the past four years, he has donated more than half of his yearly stipend to the Animal Liberation Front--an organization that uses extreme means--I wouldn't hesitate to call them terrorist--to intimidate organizations into meeting their demands. Through cooperation with his ISP, we were able to track him to several online animal rights bulletin boards, where he is frequently found under the handle 'Oberon.' In particular, we found this message--on a thread about deforestation in Ireland and Celtic mythology--to be of interest." She clicked another button, and another slide appeared; this, the text of some sort of bulletin board post. Heinkel read outloud: " 'In response to the poster who asked about the "mythical" creatures of Ireland being exterminated by such cruel destruction of their habitat: let me rush to assure you that there is nothing mythical about the puka, the pixies, the brownies, or the other fay of Eire and beyond. Those who have eyes have always been able to see them. I think we need not fear for them, however. These are noble creatures, noble warriors, and let us not forget that in the oldest myths, fairies _bite_.' "

A silence came over the room.

"I don't see your reason for hesitation, Ms. Wolfe," Integra said. "Surely the local authorities will agree that all of this is reason enough for a warrant to be granted for Albemarle's arrest."

Heinkel shook her head. "I wish it were that simple. Ms. Takagi did transmit this information to the Shrewsbury police department. Not long after that she had a very... peculiar experience, however. Some of you may be aware that my colleague is.... afflicted. She related to me that the night afterward, while she slept--as Yumiko--she had the most peculiar dream, in which she was looking into the mirror in her bedroom and seeing not her own face, but the face of a man who looked much like Albemarle. He said to her, 'You have defied the fay. Your death is assured,' and reached up and made a motion as if drawing a finger along the vein of his left wrist. She awoke to find herself standing over the sink in her hotel room, razor in hand, ready to open the vein in, yes, her left wrist. She felt a strange compulsion to _cut_, which she only avoided by reverting to her darker personality, Yumie.

"The Shrewsbury police had been notified by this time, of course--and going to Ellesmere with their arrest warrant, they found his mother, Cecilia Albemarle, in tears, mourning the fact that her son had abandoned her on the evening of an important family affair. The house was searched--much aided by Mrs. Albemarle, I might note--and Julian was not found. His father, the earl, was out of the country on a diplomatic errand and couldn't be reached for comment." Heinkel stopped to clear her throat. "I'd also like to note that since this event many of the Shrewsbury officers involved in the arrest attempt have reported being haunted by disturbing nightmares. Several have sought psychiatric counseling. There was one reported suicide attempt, by the captain who led the arrest attempt at Ellesmere."

More murmuring followed. Integra ignored the din around her, concentrating on the issue at hand. It intrigued her intellectually, like few of her duties could these days. What was this man, Albemarle? How could he insinuate himself so effectively into the psyche of all people involved directly in this case?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the louvered doors behind her creaking open. Mrs. Harrigan stood in the doorway. Heinkel looked up, gestured at Mrs. Harrigan to go ahead. A conversation--it seemed a little frantic in its pace--ensued in sign.

"I see." Heinkel said. Turning back to her audience, she announced, "Well. I hope none of you have to catch evening trains to London. It appears that the icy weather has delayed the trains." As if to punctuate her announcement, the sharp crack of an icy branch hitting an outside window sounded throughout the room.

Integra cursed inwardly. One of the downfalls of the modern high-speed trains was that ice could easily coat the power lines, reducing conductance to almost nil--quite literally stopping the trains in their tracks. "Effectively, this means what?" she asked, a touch surly.

Heinkel continued. "King's Cross is announcing one hour delays on all trains headed into London from the north." She smiled. "I suppose you'll all be joining us for dinner, then."

Integra gritted her teeth. _Yeeeeeees. Except for the one upstairs who is waiting for his dinner, and would like it fresh from the tap_.

--

It was an unfortunate side effect of traveling with a vampire--like babies, they needed to be fed entirely too often. Unlike babies, what they required couldn't be bought at the cash and carry.

Packaged blood spoiled in a cooler after too long; and it would have been unseemly to ask their landlady to store it in her refrigerator. The only option left was to bleed for him.

Alucard was nowhere in evidence when Integra returned to the room, although she was sure he would make his entrace dramatically as soon as the possibility of his being fed arose. Truth be told, it couldn't hurt to renew their little master-servant bond, given his behavior today.

Integra sat down on the bed, putting her feet up on Alucard's coffin to remove her shoes. She hadn't even bothered to turn on the light. Reaching into her overnight bag, she found what she sought, right next to her toothbrush--a straight razor. It was cool tortoiseshell and cold metal, and she touched it to the skin of her face, briefly, as a measure of comfort. She dared to close her eyes in a moment of simple indulgence--she felt so very tired now!--and when she opened them, he was there, crouched in front of her on his coffin lid. Idly, Integra said, "I think Mrs. Harrigan left some tumblers in the common room, for drinks. If you go and fetch one-"

"The intermediaries are unnecessary," he said. His voice was a growl, with an undertone of desperation.

"You're not feeding from the vein," she said simply, matter-of-factly. "We've had this conversation before."

He was silent; his eyes still glowing in the dark.

She opened the blade, positioned it against the heel of her palm. "You'll just have to play catch." One swift move, and she had opened a wound several centimeters wide and several millimeters deep. She didn't even flinch at the pain anymore.

Inverting her hand, she let the drops of blood welling there fall into his mouth, a cavern decorated with deadly white stalactites. His eyes never left hers as he fed, licking back every single drop with the relish of a cat drinking milk. It was.... unnerving. She always felt how their wills fought every time she did this; how she was never sure if she would win in the end, if the bond would once again proclaim her the master and he the pet. She felt, too, his almost hypnotic mental buzz of pleasure, the clouding of his mind, the attenuation of his thoughts to a single point:

_Your blood in my blood your blood in my blood your blood in my blood-_

_Enough._

She yanked her hand away, cradled it against her chest. She felt suddenly breathless. "The trains have been delayed. I think we'll have to go back to London tomorrow."

Alucard shrugged.

When he had made no reply for a full thirty seconds, she went on. "I'm going to rest."

She slept, and _she was falling, falling, into a bed of snow, cool and comforting and yet paralyzing. Around her she heard the crackling of fires, or torches, and she knew they were coming to claim her, her monster, her castle on the hill-_

She awoke with a start to the ringing of her cell phone on the nightstand. The room was otherwise silent and cold; Alucard was no where to be seen. How long had she slept?

Tentatively, she hit the shoulder button marked "Answer." "Sir Hellsing here," she said, her voice hoarse with sleep.

The voice on the other hand breathed a sign of relief. "Oh, I'm so glad to reach you, Sir!" Seras Victoria's voice rang out on the other end of the line. Glumly, she added, "I tried to reach Master, but he's not listening to me."

"What's wrong, Captain Victoria?"

There was a pause, and in the background Integra could hear some sort of scrambling. Muted, she heard Seras say, "No, don't lift that! I said I'd do it!" Returning to the phone, Seras started, "Uh.... Walter and I were trying to help you out. With the trains running late due to the weather, he suggested we drive up there to pick you up. Unfortunately, we ran into a little bad weather ourselves." Again Seras seemed to be talking to someone in the background. "No, let the tow truck handle it, you silly old man!" Static crackled as Seras returned. "It was so strange, Sir. We were driving up to York--with the new car now; did I mention that?--and the roads were as clean as you could imagine. I was telling Walter that those weather forecasters had to be crazy! Then we turned a corner, and it was like.... all of a sudden.... the weather turned bad. This white cloud of hail came on us, and it was so heavy that one of the hail stones cracked the windshield! Well, I think I shrieked then, and Walter was so startled that he swerved, and the road--which oddly, now, was icy---well, we didn't stay on the road. And here we are." She added mournfully, "In a ditch. With a flat tire."

"In a ditch," Integra repeated flatly.

"A ditch just south of York."

"A Yorkshire ditch." Something about this exchange simply was not registering with Integra. Finally, she realized. "Hold on a second, Seras."

She walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Beyond her window, the landscape glimmered like so many stars--the trees, the ground, the cars in the driveway, the road beyond, were all coated in almost three centimeters of ice. Even the tree that tapped at her window had been crystallized, and resembled nothing so much as a confection of spun ice.

She had heard of ice storms like this--didn't one like this strike the U.S. just last winter?--but to experience it was another thing entirely. Outside, she might as well have been looking at a fairy tale kingdom; a landscape rich with jewels of ice. It was at once beautiful and deadly.

Before she could return to Seras, a terrible screeching and cracking and grinding caught her attention. A tree in the garden--a young tree, no sapling, but one well on its way to becoming a sturdy oak--had just been cleft down the middle from the weight of the ice. "Seras," Integra said, perfectly calmly, "Once you get the car out of the ditch, turn around. Go back to London. There's nothing you can do here."

* * *


	3. A Midwinter Night's Folly

Chapter 3 - A Midwinter Night's Folly

_The king doth keep his revels here to-night.  
Take heed the queen not come within his sight;  
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath,  
Because that she, as her attendant, hath  
A lovely boy solen from an Indian king,--  
She never had so sweet a changeling;  
And jealous Oberon would have the child  
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild_  
-- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ (Act II, Scene I), William Shakespeare

Integra stood beside a lake of glass, glazed with ice, like everything else around her. Behind her, was a wood of stark black trees dripping with icicles; before her, beyond the lake, was a hill rising out of the waters. It, too, was covered in ice and snow, but the trees here--great cherry trees, wet and black--were in bloom. Their white blossoms rained down, swirled with the snow, and formed piles at their black roots.

She had no way to cross the water and yet she knew she must.

From behind her, there was a crunching noise, as if of a foot on the snowy ground. She spun around, startled, and beheld fantasy--a silver sled for one, drawn by a figure that was half-horse, half-man (_centaur_, she reminded herself). He was a handsome figure, breathing clouds of steam into the air--all bronzed skin and a head of black hair that hung down his back like a mane.

_Where are we going?_ she found herself asking.

_The Menagerie._

Somehow, that sounded right. _Then let us go._ She entered the sleigh, and they set off with a jolt. 

It seemed as if no time had passed, but now Integra was standing in the foyer of a great house. It was the same black, white, and silver of the landscape surrounding it--she beheld chandeliers of gleaming crystal, tile of brilliant white marble, and smooth black stairs arching up to a balcony. All was elegant and yet sparse. The furnishings, however, mattered little to Integra. Her eyes were fixed on the man who stood before her.

He reminded Integra of nothing so much as a crow. He was dressed in a black sport coat and trousers, with a white shirt with no tie beneath. Part of his black hair veiled the corner of his eye, as the wing of a crow would lie at rest at the crow's side. His eyes were green, hazel, green-black; all colors at once, with the translucency of wavy glass. His face had a certain symmetry; looking at him, Integra was certain that the distance from his corvine nose to his forehead was more perfect than on any face she could remember. He was smiling, and holding out a hand with well-manicured, long fingernails. Integra remembered, then, that she had dreamed this before.

"Welcome to the Menagerie, Miss Hellsing. I am Oberon." When Integra did not take his hand, he dropped it discreetly to his side.

The events of the day before had been dim in her head, veiled as if in dream, but now they jumped into sharp contrast. With a sudden realization of her circumstances, she hissed, "Julian Albemarle!"

He nodded, a touch sadly. "I have been known to go by that name, as well."

She looked around frantically, reached for a weapon in a shoulder holster that wasn't there. She was wearing the white pyjamas she had worn to bed, and over them, the green silk dressing gown that she usually wore. She was barefoot, too. She dimly recalled that when she slept, she usually kept a weapon under her pillow. That had seemed defense enough--but then, she hardly expected to be confronted by enemies _in_ her _dreams_.

Perhaps she should have been.

Albemarle laughed, amused at her unease.

"Where am I?" she asked, futilely. Everything seemed so _real_, although, logically, she knew this had to be a dream.

"In a vale of dreams that I've carved out in your own mind. Once I know your name, it is a land I can create, and go to, at will." He paused. "The science escapes me, but I've been told that I can manipulate beta waves, the kind of brain waves exhibited during REM sleep. It was an ability I was born with, so far as I can tell." When that elicited no response, he added, "As I have said, if it will put you at ease, you may call this place 'The Menagerie.' It is a meager replica of one of the places I call home."

"You do more than manipulate dreams," she said coldly, perseverating on the first part of his sentence. "I've heard of you, and know what you're capable of. You manipulate the dreamer, too."

"Not precisely," he said, raising a finger pedantically. "Have you ever had a dream so intense that you woke up and knew you had to act on it? A dream that haunted you until you slept again? It is in those places that I exist." He paused. "But there is no need for it to come to that. As of now, I believe we have no reason to war. I think we can come to an agreement amicably."

"Agreement?"

"Yes, Miss Hellsing. Surely you are familiar with the term? I want something from you, and you want something from me, and surely we can reach a place where both are satisfied."

"I want nothing from you," she scoffed. "Except for your destruction."

He chuckled at her brashness. It was an effete laugh, made even more genteel by the delicate hand he lifted to cover his smile. "You are so harsh, Miss Hellsing, and yet you know little of me. Are you referring to the incident in Shrewsbury? There is an explanation for that, and one I am sure you would find sympathetic."

"Would I?" Integra probed. " 'Fairies bite, too', eh? What _does_ that mean?"

"It means exactly what it says. Surely you aren't so naive. You, too, have creatures that lust for blood in your menagerie."

It dawned on Integra suddenly. "Mauled by animals," she whispered. "Vampires, rather. Is that's what's in your menagerie, Albemarle?"

This time he laughed outright. It was a jolly sound, completely unsuited to the setting. "You are singularly devoted to your calling, Miss Hellsing, that you see the undead where there are none. But let us review the facts of the case, shall we? The children and their teachers were seen taking a stroll into the Quarry, the park that borders on the Severn. Does that not strike you as odd? An entire day school, leaving the school en masse?"

Integra shrugged. She had no accurate barometer any more for what was odd and what was not.

"They were pixy-led. Have you heard the term?"

She shook her head.

"The fay, most especially the pixies, are known for their abilities to obfuscate the correct path, to lead astray. I find it useful in a number of tasks--like leading the lambs to the slaughter." He smiled a thin, bloodless smile. "Like your prince, I have creatures that need to be fed." He crossed the distance between then to grab her hand, turning it over to reveal the mark where a razor had recently parted the flesh. His passed his fingers over it tenderly. His touch, though warm with human blood, made her shudder. "I have a number of creatures in my menagerie, Miss Hellsing. You have already met one of them, the centaur Naxos, when you entered this place. I also have at my disposal many other creatures of myth, of faerie: the pixies, as I mentioned; the puka, the Irish demons, born of fallen angels. The kelpie..." He smiled, lifted an eyebrow. "You've heard of the kelpie."

It was not a question. Integra had. They were water-sprites of Scottish folklore with an insatiable taste for human flesh. In myth, they would take the form of a horse standing by the riverside; ready to lure humans to subaqueous deaths. Now she was beginning to piece together an explanation of what had happened in Shrewsbury. "The children... your pixies led them into the park, and..."

"And then they went for a pony ride," he said plainly. "On the beautiful underwater horses."

Integra was at a loss for words. "You," she said finally, "are a foul, cruel man."

Almost as an innocent side note--but with the note of a veiled threat, he added, "I have more obscure creatures still." He paused, lifting a finger to his lips as if in thought. "I suppose menagerie is really a foul word for it, for they serve me willingly. They share my goals, my visions, my plans. They long for their time to come again, for the banners of faerie to fly over Albion again. A Dominion of the Savage Beasts, they call it. Wouldn't it be nice?" He said "nice" in such a childish voice, that for a brief moment, Integra could not possibly believe that such a polite, urbane man could hurt her.

It was only a moment. Then, she pulled her hand away as if shocked. "And what," she said, "do you want from me?"

He smiled lightly, turning away to look out the great bay windows that opened on the frozen lake below. "In folklore, the changeling child has his eyes anointed with an ointment that allows him to see the marvels of fairy-land. Since I was a boy, I have read the legends and known that they were not legends. Since I was a boy, I have been able to talk to the creatures that no one else can see, and manipulate the dreams of others to serve their purposes. They called me Oberon, and it was a name I took up myself, after a time." He spun on a heel, looked back at her. "Are you familiar with Oberon?"

"I've read _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, if that's what you mean."

Albemarle chuckled. "Well, yes, of a sort. Shakespeare took his ideas from a happy blend of Spenser and the native folk tales of the British Isles. Spenser's Oberon, however, was drawn straight out of the medieval legend of Huon de Bordeaux. Are you familiar with that tale?"

"I am not."

"A shame. It would tell you a good deal about me, really. That Oberon, in turn, is not an original, but is the dwarf Elberich, the Teutonic Erl-King, by another name. Everything old is new again, eh? Anyway. I'll speak in a language you understand, and if it's the language of the Bard, so be it. You remember the plot of his play?"

Integra had no clue where this was going, and was frankly, a little annoyed by Albemarle's diversion into literature. "Vaguely. Oberon is warring with the Fairy Queen, Titania. Hijinks ensue. Someone gets turned into a donkey."

"Yes, _Titania_. Proserpina, in Spenser's poem. A noble figure--she is a fairy, I think, because she is so unlike any woman of her day. She is powerful, and undaunted by male power. She is a woman with creatures of great power at her command. Surely that sounds familiar to you."

"I am sure it does not," Integra said, indifferent to his flattery.

Albemarle chuckled. "Oh, you are very coy, Miss Hellsing. But certainly you can't deny that there is one creature you hold in thrall, your changeling prince, the vampire Alucard--or whatever he's calling himself these days."

"What of him?" Integra asked, a touch warily.

"He is a powerful weapon. Coupled, the two of you are a power to be reckoned with. Surely you've had a chance, in the past months, to survey the sheer perfection of the destruction you brought to Millenium, to take some pride in how you saved our homeland."

There was a certain rightness in the duty she had done, and she remembered the immense power she had felt, watching her servant in his truest form, cutting down their enemies. To feel that powerful... it bordered on the erotic.

But this wasn't a thought she was about to share with Albemarle--and thankfully, she seemed to retain some privacy of thought in this dreamworld. "You talk almost like him," she said casually. "Certainly you both seem to have charmed the serpent out of his tongue." She fixed Albemarle with the coldest stare she could manage. "But it doesn't change the fact that my servant would grind you under his heel at my slightest whim."

"Oh, but we mustn't war, Titania," he said smoothly. He was standing at her ear now, purring into it. His voice could have cut through silk. "When Oberon and Titania war, do you know what happens? The very land itself wars. Why war, when we have so much in common?"

Once again, she pushed him away. "I have nothing in common with you. You are a common murderer."

"You would like to believe that. But then, you, too, have killed humans."

"There are a great many things of which I am ashamed, Mr. Albemarle, but I assure you, my institute does not kill innocents or children."

Ignoring her protests, Albemarle fell to one knee. "Be my fairy queen, Miss Hellsing. Be my Titania. You love this country as I love this country, and I would hate to see it come to war again, and so soon. Be my Titania, cede your changeling prince to me, and we shall have what we all desire."

"If it is domination of this nation you wish, then you do not love this country as I love this country," she said firmly.

"Ah, but the promise is so temptingly close..." He stood, and leaned in close to her ear, sliding a hand over her shoulder, in a gesture of taking her into his confidence. "I know how you love power, love to dominate. I know that every time your vampire prince takes another life, you feel a little thrill of pleasure in your gut, and you don't know why. I believe, that given enough time, you can be tempted to anything, Miss Hellsing." He paused. "You asked what it is you want. It is this that you want, though you can't speak it."

Once again she brushed away his filthy touch, although it was much harder this time to do so. "When will you release me from this dream?"

"First you must give me an answer. Yes or no, Miss Hellsing? Will you be my Titania?"

"And if I say no?"

He smiled at her with that sweet smile. " 'Why should Titania cross her Oberon? I do but beg a little changeling boy to be my henchman.' "

"_And if I say no?_" she insisted.

"You will not say no for long," he said quietly. Already the dreamscape was fading; the vista beyond the window had faded to plain grey, and the stairs, the balcony, the tile floor seemed to be melting away. Only Albemarle remained constant.

"_And if I say no?_" she screamed into the void.

"Let us just say, keep your changeling prince near, and keep him dear. Well I know the limits of human vigilance." Albemarle slid out of view.

The mirror in the bathroom slid into view, glassy and silent. Integra blinked a few times, wondering how she had gotten here. She looked down at her hands. One of them held the tortoiseshell-handled razor blade. _Oh,_ she said, as if it all suddenly made sense, and went back to what she had been doing--which was carving a bloody point into the flesh of chest with the tip of the razor, directly above her left breast.

In the mirror, the words she carved were gibberish. That startled her a bit, and she looked down, trying to read from above, hoping it would be more successful than reading backwards. _You-_

The mirror went black, then red, and then her changeling prince appeared before her, shadow forming into substance. His eyes burned with fierce intensity. No, no changeling prince, this, only Alucard.

With no warning, he pinned her to the wall with a grasp on both arms. "What is the meaning of this?" he hissed. His eyes wandered from her eyes, to her chest, clearly distracted by the blood there.

It was all so perfectly logical. She narrowed her eyes at him. "How many times do I have to beg my privacy of you, servant? I was just writing-" She paused. What was she writing? Again she looked down.

_You Are Mine._

In a flash, she remembered everything--the dream, Julian Albemarle, his parting words. The razor dropped from fingers struck useless by surprise. Her look of shock melted into one of anger. "He had me in thrall." She pounded a fist uselessly against the wall of the bathroom. "The bastard. _He imprisoned me in my own thoughts_." Already, she felt her fingers twitching, wanting to reach again for the blade she had dropped. What more did he want? When would he free her? She gritted her teeth against the compulsion. "This- this is what Heinkel was telling me about. This is what he tried to do to Yumiko." Unlike Yumiko, she didn't have another personality to flee to.

Alucard regarded her intently, cocking his head to one side in consideration of her thoughts. She felt momentarily exposed, as if he had peeled away her thoughts as easily as peeling an orange. "Julian Albemarle. A human. _He_ did this to you." He plucked the name so deftly from her thoughts that he might have been plucking it from the air. He snarled. "I will cut him down, Master."

"No, you mustn't," she whispered, but she wasn't sure if it was really her speaking, or this strange compulsion. She remembered still his words, _keep your changeling prince near, and keep him dear_. "No. I don't even know where he is." She began to feel now the effect of her own handiwork. The shallow cuts stung in the cold air, and the blood was sliding down her chest, staining the edges of her pyjama top. This was definitely going to be a delight to explain to the laundry staff. "Please- just- the razor-"

With a growl, Alucard kicked the razor out of any possible notion of reach, and it went skittering along the wall, finally disappearing into shadow. The smell of her blood, she could see, was gradually having its effect on him; it was as if he was coming undone at the seams, his body losing substance and turning into shadow at the edges. "If I didn't know your mind, I'd think you'd done this to torment me."

"My intent was not to bait you," she said, barely biting back sharper words. "Release me." Already she felt exposed, standing there, bleeding, with half of her pyjama top undone.

He shifted hazily, clearly disliking her delay. He was a child with poor impulse control, when it came down to it. As a human, he was used to getting his way, and it was no different now that he had fangs and preternatural powers to enforce that will. "Not yet. You're still in that man's thrall. I won't have you going and impaling yourself on a butter knife."

"I have no intention of doing that," she scoffed. Then again, perhaps she did. It was hard to tell. She did awfully miss that razor, though. "You'd rather like that, though, wouldn't you? _Vlad_."

He growled in response, and closed the distance between the two of them--not that much had remained, anyway--with a knee driven between her legs. "If you're going to call me by _that_ old name," he whispered into her ear, "then I'm at least entitled to being obeyed, like the prince I once was. And right now, it would please the prince greatly to hold you down until you stop wanting to carve that man's initials into your flesh, and glut myself on the blood you've oh-so-kindly spilled." His body, in close proximity, radiated cold like a human body would radiate heat.

Integra pondered how he could be so cold when she had fed him only hours before. "I don't owe you two meals in one night. But," she paused, considering. She remembered her words to Heinkel, about slack on the leash. Relinquishing her control for small moments like this meant greater dominance in the end, in the places that mattered. "I suspect I shall allow it, servant." She hoped that common sense--and not the self-destructive compulsion that clouded her thoughts--that had won out here.

There was no time to consider; Alucard was already burying his face in the folds of her pyjama top, cold tongue licking away the droplets of blood that were already pooling there. His left hand disengaged her wrist--replacing itself with a shackle of shadow--and roughly, he groped at her right breast through the fabric, pushing it up over the pyjamapyjama top enough to reveal the rivulets of blood than had run down its slope. _Already cold,_ he pronounced mentally, with an undertone of dismay, as he cleaned that breast of lines of blood. Integra shivered at his chill and intimate touch. He continued, laving his tongue across the bloody letters that spanned the distance between her breasts, pausing at the end of every letter to savor the blood pooling there, and finally descended on her left breast, where she had most recently cut. Insinuating a hand between the pyjama top and her skin, he lifted the left breast into view, giving it the same treatment as he had given the first. His hand idly played across her nipple as he absorbed every last drop of blood that he could.

A roiling at the base of her spine told Integra that she had taken this too far. "Enough," she said, a little hoarsely. She had been manhandled enough tonight; first the mental violation by Albemarle, and now the liberties that her servant took with her in the name of stealing every drop of her blood that he could. But _that_; that was a more familiar annoyance; an annoyance that might not even annoy, had he ever known how to choose the proper place and time. "If your plan was distract me, you've succeeded admirably."

She felt him grin, his face pressed to her chest. The slightest blush of color showed on his cheeks. She felt the shackles of shadow release her; as if he was finally convinced that she was free of Albemarle's enchantment. "You know," he said, quite amiably, his voice muted by fabric and flesh, "I have nightmares, too. But unlike you, I can choose whether or not I sleep and let them overcome me."

She blinked, trying to detect motive from the sentence. "What do you mean?"

"What will you do when Albemarle returns? Eventually he will win you to his side, by sheer erosion of will. You can't stay awake forever," he pointed out, adding, "as a human." He lifted his head from her chest, a sly smile playing out across his features.

She stared him down, chilled a little by the implication. "I'm bloody well going to try."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, the lights in the room flickered and died. _Power outage_. Integra felt Alucard leave; it was as a whispering of cold air around her. The small bathroom window emitted enough light to indicate that dawn was approaching. She knew her servant's destination, then, and yawned, wishing silently that she could join him in sleep.


End file.
